Symptom

When the client sends a message with special characters, the special characters are not displayed.

Applies To

• Special Characters
• REST API

Resolution

URL encode the HTTP GET request before performing the request. The parameters of the HTTP GET request can be encoded with the aid of an online encoder, such as URL Decoder/Encoder. Furthermore, most programming languages have built-in HTTP encoding mechanisms.

Cause

In an HTTP restful request, the HTTP GET request must be URL-encoded, which means that most special characters must be encoded in a way that is understandable to a webserver.

As such, characters such as the plus sign (+) or the question mark (?) must be replaced by their URL-encoded equivalents (%2b for the plus sign and %3F for a question mark for instance).